A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



them; yet her Majesty now requiring but the furnishing of 138 soldiers a 

 new taxation is made and demanded. "^ This fear of Spanish invasion, how- 

 ever, passed over, as is signified by the later order of this same year for the 

 discharge of the ' Beacon Watches.' " 



The Tudor period was now drawing to a close, and in i 603 the great 

 Queen Elizabeth, who had outlived nearly all her famous ministers, passed 

 away. With her also passed that era of strong but wise and temperate policy 

 which had been applied to the government of the wild and undaunted 

 North. 



Much has been so far written of the Elizabethan campaign against the 

 Roman Catholics, which was in Lancashire the chief poHtical agitation in 

 the last half of the sixteenth century. Before leaving that century it will be 

 well to insist upon another campaign which the queen also prosecuted in 

 Lancashire, though with less necessity for stern measures of suppression ; this 

 was what might be termed the minor war against the Puritans. The queen 

 disliked the Puritan independence of thought and their objection to prelatical 

 authority which, she rightly argued, boded no good-will to monarchical 

 authority. But since the events of the time caused even the Puritans 

 to side firmly with the throne against Romanist conspiracies, their tenets did 

 not clash with or threaten the safety of the government, and, moreover, many 

 of the queen's advisers, including Lord Burghley, were of strong Puritan 

 leanings. One of her chaplains, Dean Nowell of St. Paul's, a noted Lanca- 

 shire divine, preached strongly both in London and Lancashire in favour of 

 Puritan doctrines. Some excesses, however, of the more extreme professors 

 of the party called for vigorous political suppression. In 1593 the authors 

 of several seditious pamphlets were hanged, and with these also Penry, one 

 of the authors of the Martin Mar-Prelate tracts, some of which had been 

 printed and published in Manchester" by a wandering press seized and 

 destroyed there in 1588." 



More and more, however, in Lancashire, due perhaps to the vigorous 

 preaching of Dean Nowell and the following he had in his part of the country, 

 Puritan doctrine found favour among the Protestant gentry. Possibly no 

 more significant sign of the tendency of the times could be found than in the 

 protest issued and signed by a number of Lancashire gentlemen against the 

 enormities practised on the Sabbath and against the general desecration of 

 the hours appointed for divine service, and for the abridging of the number of 

 ale-houses in the county. This petition was signed by the well-known names 

 of 'Jo. Byron, Ric. Shirborn, Edm. Trafforde, Nicholas Banester, James 

 Asshton, Ric. Brereton, Ric. Assheton, Bryan Parker, Thos. Talbotte, John 

 Bradshawe, Edm. Hopwood, Alex. Rigbie, W. Wrightington, Edm. 

 Fleetwoode.' ** 



Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign the Puritans had grown even 

 stronger and firmer in their convictions than before, and looked with great 

 expectations to the young King of Scotland as to one who, coming from a 

 realm where his chief counsellors had been of the strictest Presbyterian order, 



" Harl. MS. 1926, art. 112, fol. 117. Quoted in Lanes. Lieutenancy, ii, p. 233, note. 

 " Ibid. art. 119, fol. 125. 

 " Timperley, Hist, of Printing, 400 et seq. 

 '' State Trials. Quoted Lams. Lieutenancy, ^X.. ii, 223, note. 

 " Harl. MS. 1926, art. 69, fol. 80. Quoted Lanes. Lieutenancy, pt. ii, 217 et seq. 



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